Woo Audio WA6SE Vacuum Tube Headphone Amplifier

The Woo Audio WA6-SE is a 100% vacuum-tube headphone amplifier. It just works: there's nothing but loads of clean, great sound and great ergonomics. Unlike many of the dinky excuses for expensive amplifiers out there, the Woo Audio WA6-SE is the real thing, loaded with tons of gain ("power"), a big, precise and smooth volume control that allows easy, instant adjustment over a huge range of volumes with no channel imbalance, and no noise, no oscillation, no funny business and no problems — just loads of beautiful, clean music from a perfectly constructed instrument.

The Woo Audio WA6-SE is a real, live American masterpiece, designed, built and sold by the company run by the man who founded it. While some people bemoan how other once-great audio companies like Fisher, B&W and H. H. Scott stopped making great things once their founders passed away, Woo is an American company making great audio products right here in New York City.

The Woo Audio WA6-SE is all audio and no BS. There is nothing "digital" or even transistorized about it. This isn't some whimpy "hybrid" amp with the tubes used only for decoration; even the Woo's power-supply rectifier is a vacuum tube!

Unlike some headphone amps selling for double the price, the Woo amplifiers are built as they should be: hand-made, point-to-point wired (no printed-circuit boards) and all-metal, especially the knobs, switches and transformer covers. All the front-panel and top markings are deeply engraved, not printed. At any price, the Woo amplifiers are precision works of art.

The Woo amplifiers are steals. They are better-made than many far more expensive items, like the made-in-China Krell amps that sell for five times the price.

How can Woo be such a bargain? Easy: Woo sells direct, so you're paying direct. With no expensive middle-men, distributors and dealers expecting 40% margins at every step, you're getting today what would sell for many times more if it were more widely distributed.

If Woo hired a copywriter to spin more audiophile BS and PR about them, he could be asking — and getting — ten times the price.

The WA6-SE reminds me more of the professional broadcast and recording equipment with which I used to work from the 1940s and 1950s; especially with its circular connectors and separate power supplies. Even the pro gear from America's golden age wasn't as well made as this Woo amplifier; the pro gear often made due with printed tube-type markings.

Goodness, I was just looking at the RCA input jacks, and they are stamped WOO AUDIO. Not only that, just like Tektronix test gear of old that always inserted resistors all in the same direction, all the RCA jacks are installed so that the WOO AUDIO lettering, visible only under a magnifying glass, is all oriented in the same direction. Someone there really cares about quality!

Of course the only way you'll appreciate how precisely, solidly and carefully made are these amplifiers is to own one. It all looks the same online, which is why I've gone on about how wonderful it is to see some real gear made without compromise — and when this equipment sells for bargain prices because it's still a relatively less-known brand and sold directly, I'm all over it. The Woo WA6-SE looks professional, not pimped.